Global Warming; a Growing Problem

Global Warming; a Growing Problem

By: Elena Timakova

Thursday, June 4^th, 2015

Ice bergs in Lallemand Fjord in Antarctica. 

In recent years, there has been talk of global warming slowing down. In fact, 1998 was the most recent year of record warmth. Since then, global warming seems to have slowed down and become nonexistent in the minds of everyday people and even some scientists.

This has been described as odd by some since carbon dioxide emissions have been at the peak in the last decade. As well, this led to the somewhat false notion of a halt or a ‘haitus’ in the warming temperatures.

In addition, the ‘missing hot spot’ was a pretty big issue recently. Essentially, the temperatures in the tropical upper troposphere (about 5-15 km in altitude) have not risen as high as was anticipated and this was called the missing hot spot.

Unfortunately, recent studies and research have proven the ‘haitus’ and the ‘missing hot spot’ incorrect and that global warming is a real thing.

The ‘haitus’ can be explained in terms of oceanic current patterns. This past decade the oceans underwent a recurring change in their currents, temporarily slowing down the warming of the planet. This ‘change in currents’ phenomenon is not connected to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and has no physical connection to global warming itself, hence it has simply been a bump in the road towards the inevitable rise in average temperatures on Earth.

It has been predicted that the atmosphere should be warming faster than the surface of the Earth, but with the missing hot spot, it has been shown otherwise. This leads to the doubting of global warming.

But in the past few years, there have been more and more news articles popping up discussing the increasing temperature changes in the atmosphere. Back in 2011, satellite studies have shown that the atmosphere was heating up. In 2013, weather balloon (radiosonde) data has shown that the upper troposphere is actually warming up and that it was not a fluke in the measurement instruments. The average warming rate is about 0.25ᵒC per decade, whereas at the surface the average rate is only about 0.14ᵒC per decade.

The average climate model predicted that the upper troposphere would heat at about 64% the rate that the surface would heat at, and the data is showing that the troposphere is actually heating at 70-80% of the surface rate, so global warming is really occurring faster than predicted. As well, this increase has been shown to be steady and consistent since weather balloon launches began in 1958.

However, one puzzle seems to remain. The satellite data show that the haitus happened at the atmospheric level, while the radiosonde data show that no such thing occurred. This has been explained by saying that there is another factor at play that we are unaware of or a factor that has not yet been properly accounted for. So climate scientists still have a few puzzles to work out, but seems like the ‘missing hot spot’ has been found.